


The Candle

by KatsudonLink



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-14
Updated: 2013-06-14
Packaged: 2017-12-14 23:47:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/842831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KatsudonLink/pseuds/KatsudonLink
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You can’t study the darkness by flooding it with light.”  - Edward Abbey</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Candle

**Author's Note:**

> Hello everyone! This is the first time I'm posting. Be gentle~
> 
> If you want to listen to something while reading it, I think Moonlight Sonata may go with it. Or you may find a bit from Symphony of Sorrowful Songs, I think the beginning may work although you may want to fast forward one or two minutes. 
> 
> I tried writing this with music but ended up writing it in silence.

There are three steps of putting a candle out.

 

  1. Lick your fingers. Licking your fingers add a layer of water that protects your skin.
  2. Place your hand about a centimeter away from the wick. Too close or too far and you won’t be able to put it out.
  3. Quickly grab the wick and then let go. If you linger, you’ll get burned. 



There is a quote that Jim rather likes. 

“You can’t study the darkness by flooding it with light.” 

* * *

 

There’s a small flame Jim Moriarty sees, the smallest of flames whenever he’s consumed by his shadows. It dances almost mockingly and it would’ve held absolutely no value nor significance if it wasn’t so dark. A small light that only enables to see the outlines of shadows of shadows. It’s not even blue; it’s yellow and red, mostly red. It isn’t warm, a homeless man can’t even get his hands warm from it if he tries. It’s just a candle, slowly melting it’s wax away and Jim, up until now, just watched it become disfigured in the corner. The candle is on a silver tray, as if it’s presented to him. As if it is the greatest gift ever. Jim doesn’t know when he lit it; he doesn’t know when it came along. Jim doesn’t even approach it much less blow it out.

He wants to close his eyes to reach darkness again, but he can still _see_ the flame, he can still sense a light through his eyelids and somehow it’s different. Somehow it’s still bothering him and taking his attention. Jim doesn’t like to see things move, because he wants to watch and watch and watch the flame but it only makes him soar and it makes him tired. 

The light hurts Jim’s eyes. When he stumbles, he doesn’t like to see what was under his feet, but the candle shows him anyways. The candle is persistent and some days, the candle is brighter when some days it’s about to go out. It never does. Sometimes it makes Jim want to kneel down and weep. Sometimes it makes him want to slice the candle in half, pull out the wick and shred the twined material into pieces. The wax is merely melted, the wax can be heated and reshaped but it is the wick that burns and gives light and no candle can be alight without a wick. 

It makes Jim’s head hurt and he moans, then the flame almost bounces as if it’s scolding him. 

He doesn’t want this. 

He doesn’t need this. 

He watches the wax melt from afar because the light doesn’t let him do anything else. 

 

Drip-drop

Drip-dro

Drip-dr

Drip-d

Drip

Dri

Dr

D 

D

D

D

 

He has to end this; he has to put the candle out. He wants to lick his fingers but they’re covered with liquid ghosts of past lives –which Jim wouldn’t have _seen_ if it wasn’t for that damned candle- and Jim’s hands are shaking but he brings them to his lips anyways and pushes out a tongue that’s no longer pink, he covers it with red instead. 

You can only swallow a pint of blood before you get ill. 

He’s determined this time, he crawls towards the source of his eternal misery- not the source but the one that makes him notice his life is damned. The silver tray and the candle on top of it, stuck to the tray by the melted wax. He closes in, his pupils constrict as they adjust to the brightness. It isn’t bright for anyone else; it’s bright for him. It’s bright because the candle is placed in a room where there should only be darkness. 

He looms over it, looking down at it and- he sees something on the silver tray, barely making it out through the drops of wax. It’s a man, eyes big and dark, hair disheveled and the color of tar, face like a skeleton, cheeks caved in. Under his eyes are baggy and it’s as if someone rubbed coal on his skin there. His mouth is small, lips chapped, bleeding. His hand seems scrawny, his bony fingers are a centimeter away from the wick. Under his fingernails are black and dark red at the corners. The light only brightens up the underside of the face he sees and for a second Jim panics because he genuinely thinks he saw a monster –because God knows what the hell is in that room and he wouldn’t have to deal with that if it wasn’t for that damned candle-. He pulls his hand away in a heartbeat, scurrying and curling to the darkest corner of the room where he can’t see what he’s touching or what’s touching him. Where he can’t see how he looks or what he’s wearing.   

Only in the corner of his mind it registers that what he saw was a reflection of himself and he decides never to approach the candle again. 

One day, the wax on the right side of the candle would melt more than the left side and it would collapse and if it’s still tall enough, it’ll start spreading the flame and Jim’s cold safe little room of darkness would be flooded by light and warmth- and if Jim insists on staying there, he’d burst into flames, be consumed until there’s nothing left of him but wax shaped like an empty shell of a man with an empty hole for a wick that was never placed there. 

And the candle and he both knew where he would go after that happened. 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sure you've figured it out by now but if anyone's still hazy, Sebastian's the candle and the room is Jim's mind, basically. Also you can accept the wick as a soul, or wanting to do good which is, I think, is not grand in Sebastian but still existent somewhat. 
> 
> Still, you honestly don't have to accept them as what I just said as that is the beauty of writing. If you took something different out of it, then how wonderful!


End file.
